the building is still there but the madhouse is history. the psych ward is now outsourced. i figured if it wasn't razed it had changed much since 1968. it is spooky. she went there because it was that or jail. imagine jailing somebody for overdosing. and then they load them up with drugs! though now a lot of people with mental struggles are in jail, or the street. the university had already razed most of the community and banished the remnants to the periphery by the time bette howland brokedown and got snatched to the madhouse. they didn't call it gentrification, what did they call it? renewal, revitalization, progress. when they closed the community mental health clinics there were handy euphemisms for that too. first they deinstitutionalized the institutions, then there was need of community mental health clinics, then they closed the mental health clinics, and now folks who struggle with mental health are snatched to jail or prison or left to wander the streets where they might have once lived. 

i was thinking walking with lulu how there but for the grace of dog go i. many times i behaved in a crazy manner, yet i only got snatched up once for a minute and was released of my own recognizance. maybe it was survival instinct, or recognition, it felt like escape by chance.